"Italy Tuesday seized Mafia-linked assets worth $1.9 billion -- the biggest mob haul ever -- in an operation revealing that the crime group was trying to 'go green' by laundering money through alternative energy companies."

"Wildfires have cost Russia 300 billion dollars in forest loss, environmentalists said on Thursday, explaining the scale of the disaster by Vladimir Putin's 'absurd' changes to forestry law."

"Russia's record hot summer of forest fires and resulting air pollution has left the reputations of its politicians badly scorched. Public anger is mounting at state neglect that allowed the fires to spread and at a cover-up of the number of resultant deaths from heatstroke."

As archetypal as a scene from Grimm's tales, the 580-square-mile Bialowieza Forest, said to be the last remaining stand of primeval forest in all of Europe, is being logged.

"A unique collection of European fruit and berry crops could be destroyed after a court in Russia gave permission today for land at a research institute in St. Petersburg to be turned into a housing estate."

"Russian emergency workers have increased forest patrols in a western region previously contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, trying to prevent wildfires from spreading harmful radiation, officials said Wednesday."

"The daily mortality rate in Moscow has doubled and morgues are overflowing amid an acrid smog caused by the worst heatwave in Russia's thousand-year history, officials said Monday."

"Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill asked Russians to pray for rain on Sunday as wildfires raged across the European parts of the vast country, sweltering since June in an unprecedented heat wave."

"A huge cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland turned the skies of northern Europe into a no-fly zone on Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded."

"The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers. ... But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend."

"Almost 90 percent of Austrian glaciers  shrank in 2009, some by as much as 46 metres (150 feet), the Austrian Alpine Association (OeAV) said Friday."

"After his governing conservative party took a pounding in regional polls on Sunday, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has dropped a key environmental goal: setting up a carbon tax to limit the growth of emissions and spur the development of renewable fuels."

"Energy firms taking part in a North Sea boom for offshore wind farms will have to watch out for remains of Stone Age villages submerged for thousands of years, an expert said on Tuesday."

A deliberately caused oil spill of some 660,000 gallons in Northern Italy snaked down the Po River and reached the province of Parma raising fears of contamination in a farm district that produces Italy's famed prosciutto and parmesan cheese.

"Poland's Bialowieza National Park is home to some of the most impressive trees in Europe. Old growth oak, ash, spruce, hornbeam, linden, lime, and pine tower out of sight, their trunks dripping with luscious moss. For millennia these trees (some of which are more than 600 years old) have harbored legions of top carnivores, rare bugs, birds, and plants. Three packs of wolves range the park's wilderness, along with bison, lynx, wild boar, roe and red deer, otter, cranes, storks, three kinds of eagle, and four owl species." The park faces a number of threats, especially logging."